Remunicipalising Urban Public Transport. Is France particular?[La remunicipalisation des transports publics urbains en France. Combien et pourquoi ?]

For decades, public transport services in most French towns and cities have been provided on a delegated management basis, by subcontracting to private parties, using calls for tender as a selection mechanism. Recently, however, a number of cities, some of them large, have opted for direct management, moving away from the private, competitive model in favour of public management. Our study answers two questions: What is the scale of this shift? And how can it be interpreted: what are the triggers and motivations behind it? The literature on these questions is sparse, partial and dated. The database we have set up attests that remunicipalisation is no longer an anecdotal fact in France. Our interviews reveal that the motivations of local elected officials are always composite and that political factors are preponderant over transactional or economic factors.